On October 1 I went to Con Edison's SEED summit. By then I had registered on the utility's supplier portal and filed our self-certification. Neither one got us in.
The portal says it takes new suppliers by invitation, tied to a specific need. In our case the registration was the entry fee and a person was the way in. So the summit was the work, not a formality.
I recorded the talks that day. This is what Con Edison's own people said about getting in, and what a supplier and a lender said from the same stage.
What the utility said
The money is large and it is aimed at small firms. A Con Edison executive put the capital plan at $17 billion over the next three years, with four substations under construction and five more starting within two years. The company's economic impact report, published the day before, says $441 million went to diverse and small businesses in New York State last year.
Nobody described a one-day transaction. Con Edison's technology executive said the company no longer wants a day's worth of work. It wants expertise that adds to what it has, from a supplier who takes the time to learn how it runs. A third speaker said the supply chain checks take real effort on a supplier's side, and that the company wants that effort to pay off once you are through.
A Con Edison director of capital project delivery said the award usually comes down to trust, not the biggest resume. The director gave three asks: say what problem you solve for Con Edison, say so when something goes wrong instead of fixing it quietly, then solve it. Ask what the contract says, and when you get paid, after the problem is solved, not before. Payment, the director added, can take months.
The utility also said it tests new software and AI before it lets any in, and expects suppliers to protect its data the same way. A leak at a supplier is as bad as a breach at Con Edison. I build software that holds a contractor's records, so I took that as a requirement.
What a supplier said
A supplier that now provides inspectors to Con Edison said the relationship took years of showing up. What changed it was a quarterly meeting with the business unit, where they brought case studies of how they made the unit's job easier, instead of a call asking for work. Their back office advice: write the safety plan down so it is a real plan and not a word on a slide, and document invoicing and training in a way that still works at 50 or 100 people, because what works for the first ten will not.
What a lender said
A lender from a community development financial institution said a win creates costs before the first invoice is paid: materials, payroll every two weeks, insurance, bonding. The invoice may not pay in the 60 to 90 days printed on it. A profitable company can still miss payroll on a Friday, because profit and cash are not the same thing. The advice was to find a lender who understands construction before you bid, and to expect the first question to be how you won the contract, not how fast you want the money.
What I took from it
Put the three together and it is one record. The utility picks someone it can trust. The supplier says the back office has to be written down. The lender asks for the contract, the insurance and the invoices. A certificate of insurance, a safety plan, a change order and an invoice answer all three, if they sit in one place.
I came home with contacts in three formats: shared digital cards, photographed paper cards and numbers in my phone. I merged them by hand, and several were missing a title or a company. A contact with no company is a person you cannot help. Next time there is one way to capture someone, and it takes ten seconds.
The utility's own people are relationships. The other suppliers in the room are the people we can actually help. I keep those two lists apart, because they need different follow-ups. One of those suppliers was Ray Hughes, who runs RCH Mechanical, a pump and motor repair shop in the Bronx. We met on October 1. He signed on October 5, and his desk went live on October 12.
The follow-up I trust has one true fact about the person in it, goes out soon, and is signed by a human. I would rather send ten of those than a hundred of anything else.
If you were in the room and want to compare notes, the Read is twenty minutes and free.
Mark Riley